e hinterland of the mind.

And he asked: Who was she, anyway? She was a woman who said she loved
him, might even have believed it. Women under stress believe so many
things. A little anger, a little passion, a little melancholy, and
things resolve themselves into so many differences of color and line.
And what standard of truth is there? Suppose he were to tell any man of
the world of the occurrence, and to ask who she was, what she was, and
what he had been to her. They would have said it was simple. She was a
harlot of Marseilles, and he was her _amant de coeur_. But the beauty
of it! he would have objected. All the beauty was in yourself. Or as
they would have put it: All imagination!

What a snare it all was, and what was truth? How much better off a man
was if he had never anything to do with them, and yet....

A world of men, there would be something lacking! Friends he had in
plenty, men would help him, as a ship stands by another ship at sea.
Friends to talk to, of ships and sports, of ports and politics; but when
one left them, one was left by one's self. And all the subtleties of
mind came again like a cloud of wasps. To each man his own problem of
living. To each man to decide his own escape from himself.

"And the Lord God said: It is not good that the man should be alone--"
the Hebrew chronicler had imagined. No, it was not good. It was
terrible. After the day's work was done, after the pleasant evenings of
friends, then came the terror of the shadows. Unreal they might be, but
they hurt more than real things did. Unless one sank into the
undignified oblivion of drink, there was no escape. Shadows came.
Acuter than the tick of a watch, they were there, the cold mother with
the haunting eyes, the dead wife with the sullen mouth, visible as
stars. And empty as air was the space Claire-Anne should have occupied,
with her clear-cut beautiful features, her understanding eyes. Three
ghosts, and the ghost that was missing was the most terrible ghost of
all ... He could not stand them any more.... He must not be alone....

Section 7

He could not marry a Christian of the East, they were such an
unspeakably treacherous race. He could not marry a Jewess, for about
each one of the nation there seemed to be an awesome destiny, a terrible
doom or an ultimate majesty blinding human eyes; a wall, so high that it
was terrible.... He could not marry a Moslem woman, for that would mean
acceptance of Islam. And though